Totally off the cuff, but I think the intention of the torch thing--especially on the anniversary--was to represent the whole "we're heroes and villains, we're not beaten. If we can't stop you from taking our game then we'll make two or three in it's honor" kind of spirit.

I totally understand how it could bring up dark feelings, and there was some behavior at that time by certain sections of the community that was unfortunate. But there was a lot more behavior that was amazing and led to things like this game.

There were some zealots, to be sure, and I'm sure those zealots would consider you a heretic. But most people were in the middle and doing good things.

So, thought I'm not a dev, what I'm being presumptuous enough to say to you for them is--you are very welcome here and we want you to keep your badge :). You are not considered any type of heretic here, just part of the community with your own views and opinions like everyone else.

And, like Brand said, the game wasn't perfect, and we'd probably need a CoH 2.0 in a different engine by now anyway.

We all hope this game will be a "spiritual" CoH 2.0

First realize that we have from the very beginning stated this is a spiritual successor. Many of those who backed our kickstarter were displaced Cityof players. Our updates are for the most part intended for that audience, they are not press releases. Sometimes a gaming site like. Massively OP runs articles on our updates.

They do this on their own, it is not us sending info out to them. Press releases Intended for a larger audience will most likely be as an establishment of our own identity. One which will always remain attached to our inspiration for making this game. I would think its a safe bet that even when we are 5 years further down the road and a game journalist or blogger writes up an article they will reference the inspiration. After all if that old fame hadn't existed, and then be suddenly taken away from an extremely loyal fanbase, this game won't ever have started. There is no shame or reason for us to try and distance ourselves from this truth. It is our history.

I don't read anything in that post that is unreasonable. I guess it's never occurred to me to think of CoH's most vocal and strident supporters as "zealots," but I suppose there are forums where they may have presented themselves as such.

Generally speaking, I always approve of attempts to keep an eye out for overzealous behavior. I read this post as a warning of what might happen if we don't remember to show some restraint when chatting with others about our enthusiasm for CoH. Nobody wants CoT to be an unwelcome place for any reason.

I just made that picture right before I posted it.
Using the off line character creator that lets you walk around in the game's starting locations.
I got the idea from the posts before mine
Hope you all got a good laugh.

You will have to provide more detail of these various diversities as there are many ways one could misread what you intend.
Diversity of background in CoH: I would assume this to be the game's lore. Which mostly revolved around Greco-roman mythology at release and was a constant thread throughout the game's primary lore up until sunset. There was a diversity if npc groups, and in this our lore team has already given quite a few texamples.

Diversity in opinion: CoH the game had nothing to do with opinion but had much to do with expression. The forums certainly offered a space for diversity of opinion, and we have quite a bit of that already though as we have a smaller base of forum posters that CoH had at sunset there are a couple of voices which can certainly seem...louder than others. It is really not so different than the CoH boards that were available at the start of their announcement and prior to the official game forums. And as far as I'm concerned on these forums everyone has the right to express their opinion (without being defamatory), but while everyone has the right of an opinion, not every opinion is right.

Diversity if gameplay: we haven't released much of our gameplay schemes and there are reasons for that. We have all the pre-production design and supporting math and even simulations, but we have to test them in a fame envronment - which is the production phase we are in now. Any video game that gets made must first have a working prototype - which is in part what the recent video shows. But we will havelentynof diversity of gameplay in the game.

"Putting out the welcome mat": this is exactly what business and marketing for any company with a product or service does when it is ready. And I beleive that in multiple ways both our community manager and design lead have stated we aren't there yet.

How many games try to bring in a brand new audience by releasing a short video showing only prototype play. Virtually none. There is also a danger in releasing even alpha-gameplay footage, the game can change radically during development.

There was a game company, an indie, and one of the earliest adopters of UE4 who put out a kickstarter showing prototypes of some gameplay mechanics. The game was book themed, mentioned it was inspired by CoH, and tried to appeal to a wide audience, their kickstarter unfortunately failed. They tried to get direct donations on their site, but could not garner sufficient support. Sadly the company closed shop.

From the outset, CoT appealed to a particular audience, that audience responded. For the time being, it is to that audience that is being communicated to.

I fully agree that there will be a time where the company will need to put out the welcome mat and garner the attention of a wider audience.

I said this on another thread.

You're not a Heretic, you're a dissenter.

Dissenters are welcome.

Stop worrying and just say what you think and relax when others passionately disagree.

You serve a vital function.

In a world with seemingly infinite numbers of fantasy MMOs, there should be room for several superhero ones. Heck, science fiction MMOs outnumber superhero ones. Urban ones (e.g. Matrix/The Secret World) might outnumber them too.

I want there to be several. There are only two currently, neither of which captured the goodness of CoH (where is scrapperlock, e.g.) so I keep waiting.

None of these "dirt grubber" games, where you cannot fly or leap, I hereby coin that term) duplicates that fighting feel either, though a few kinda sorta vaguely approach it.

What is there to talk about? It's a small world. I don't want another also-ran design. There's plenty of diversity in boring already.

And what's hilarious is that people--many of the same people who complain about TTK--will complain that the game is "too easy" like some did in CoH.

What they never got was that the game was as hard as you wanted it to be, AND you could make it challenging by swimming in an ocean of baddies to face off with an AV, which feels heroic and epic :D!

Empyrean wrote:

And what's hilarious is that people--many of the same people who complain about TTK--will complain that the game is "too easy" like some did in CoH.
What they never got was that the game was as hard as you wanted it to be, AND you could make it challenging by swimming in an ocean of baddies to face off with an AV, which feels heroic and epic :D!

Yeah, that always was the issue I found with people who made those type of complaints. Wildstar in particular was intentionally meant to be a challenging MMO, hell it even was marketed as such and yet the forums where lit with whining since early beta. In that game you are not necessarily a hero, more like a mercanary/soldier fighting to survive from the start (or fighting to make sure others survived and settled on Nexus despite all of the monsters running around killing and eating people along with all the other things that try to kill people) so the TTK fit that game pretty well if you asked me.

For a superhero MMO a fast TTK (depending on the type of mook and the build of the hero/villain/vigilante) should be essential along with a scalable difficulty if you wanted something more challenging. DCUO and CO strayed away from that completely which heavily disappointing me with those games. It just felt like another fantasy MMO combat wise.

Redlynne wrote:

Having a lot of Crunchies to munch and keep going strong FELT (and still feels) superheroic, because it naturally leans itself towards the "desperate battle against incredible odds" that is a staple of the genre ... even if for all intents and practical purposes that dogpile of minions is barely a threat to your survival.

I don't have any problem with the idea that in terms of "MMO combat ratios" that a superhero-based game will likely be more at home with having a higher ratio (the "3 Minions equals 1 Hero" paradigm) than other MMOs where a 2:1 or even 1:1 is more appropriate. It's a matter of genre as much as anything else - as you say the superhero setting basically demands nearly over-the-top scenarios where a single superhero can viably wade into oceans of minions and be able to feel heroic doing that.

But if we are to have a game where it's considered "typical" for any given player to be able to face a larger number of enemies at any given time than other types of MMOs you have to make sure that ALL of the classes and/or skillsets available to players are able to do that in some fashion or another. It's one thing to have Tanks be able to round up 100+ minions and grind them down single-handedly but do you want to allow them to do that when you might have other classes/archetypes left with serious trouble handling just a small handful of the same minions alone?

I'm not suggesting everyone should be able to Tank dozens of critters regardless of class or that everyone should be able to solo every boss in the game with their eyes closed. I'm just saying that being able to "feel" like a true superhero shouldn't strictly rely on choosing one archetype over another. The differences in the overall "illusion of effectiveness" established between the Tank-type characters and squishy-type characters should be kept as narrow as possible.

Redlynne wrote:

Lothic wrote:
The differences in the overall "illusion of effectiveness" established between the Tank-type characters and squishy-type characters should be kept as narrow as possible.
The biggest difference in City of Heroes in this respect was the Protection Scheme. Scrappers and Tankers had Protect Schemes that applied to Self. Things like Defense, Resistance and Regeneration were all oriented about being Self Only. By contrast, for all of the "squishy" Archetypes, the Protection Scheme oriented around being Foe Only. Debuffs were the biggest source of Protection for "squishy" types, whether it was Hit Point Debuffing for Blasters, freedom of action Debuffing via Mez for Controllers, or straight up Kitchen Sink Debuffing for Defenders ... all of them were oriented around being either handicapping your Foes or aiding your Allies (and often times, both).
We aren't going to have quite so clear cut a divide in City of Titans, but the opportunity for such a division will still be there. Square pegs don't work all that well in round holes, but they're exactly what you need for square holes. It's the nature of the beast that no everyone will be able to solo with equal efficiency, or that everyone will be able to contribute to a Team with equal effectiveness. It is what it is.

Right... and again I'm not saying that every Archetype in CoT must work exactly the same or be equally effective in all situations. I'm just saying if we're going to be geared for the "lots of minions equal one player" superhero paradigm that I just want to make sure that the super-tough Tank or Scrapper types aren't the only ones who can wade through hordes of minions with a reasonable chance of success.

Even the "squishy" types should be able to do something to hordes of minions (debuff, CC or whatever) well enough to solo to a reasonable degree without having to have obtain some kind of semi-broken min/maxed hyper-expensive end-game build. While many CoH Tanks of almost any level could beat down 10-12 minions without breaking a sweat some of their squishy friends couldn't even safely solo 3 or 4 minions until practically max/Incarnate level. I'm simply suggesting that the "ability gap" be narrowed in favor of the CoT squishies not being quite so impotent in CoT.

At heart, I'm really a Scrapperlocking Scrapper ... who also enjoys being a Lockdown Controller and as a "Gravity" Tanker drawing all aggro towards me from which no Foe shall escape. I even enjoyed being a Defender (two varieties!) and a Tri-form Peacebringer and a Necromantic Tri-form Warshade. I even had a Hunstman/Crab Soldier over on Redside, who was essentially a souped up Blaster/Defender hybrid, and of course the obligatory Mastermind.

But the one thing that I *NEVER* wanted to be was a Pure Blaster. Blaster was the one Archetype my interest in playing could be measured in negative numbers. Being a Blaster just wasn't for me ... even though I loved being a Scrapperlocking Scranktroller on my Scrapper. Me? Blaster? No. Never.

So naturally my best friend, Lin Chiao Feng ... was a Blaster at heart, and played as a Hovering Angel Of Death From Above. And if memory serves me, Lin played mainly damage dealers (Blaster, Scrapper, Mastermind) although I'm sure I'm missing some memories of the full lineup of combinations we'd get up to when doing dailies together.

The thing that always impressed me though was that City of Heroes was so ... forgiving ... in the way that is made room for and "allowed" such a wide diversity of playstyles to coexist and mutually support each other. Yes, things could start getting mighty hairy for the "squishies" when there weren't aggro magnets around to attract massed quantities of attention away from them, but they still had their strong suits, and if you played them right, especially in a Team, you could still steamroller your way to success.

I remember an 8 Defender Imperius Task Force I was on one time with my Empathy/Archery Defender, Flight of Stars. I don't think I'd ever been on a faster steamroller through those missions before, including Tanker Tuesdays where my Ice/Ice/Arctic Tanker, Shirayukihime, "stole all the aggro" off the other 7 Tankers for pretty much the entire run such that essentially NONE of them could get any aggro without my permission (read: inattention).

So yes, I'm all in favor of any combination of Primary/Secondary (and Tertiary) being able to reasonably assume that they ought to be able to handle 3-4 Minions on their own and stand an excellent chance of surviving the encounter (not a guarantee perhaps, but an excellent chance). Start cranking up those numbers though and I have no problems with some of the Powerset combinations starting to run into problems with survival as Soloists, but then bringing OTHER factors to bear in Teams which then make up for their poor showing as Soloists.

So to address your point Lothic ... I'm perfectly fine with the game being "unbalanced" between Solo and Team capabilities, so long as the game is [b][i]FAIR[/i][/b] to all by compensating poor Solo performance with excellent Team contribution potentials.

Redlynne wrote:

So to address your point Lothic ... I'm perfectly fine with the game being "unbalanced" between Solo and Team capabilities, so long as the game is FAIR to all by compensating poor Solo performance with excellent Team contribution potentials.

Yes again I agree that not everyone needs to be able to solo as well as everyone else assuming the weak soloers are balanced by being able to bring other unique advantages to the table. The point I'll stress here is that the weakest soloer should not be so far less effective than the strongest soloer that you could legitimately compare them using the Incredible Hulk and Steven Hawking as examples of their relative combat potentials.

When CoH first launched you could easily see there were gigantically huge differences between many of the Archetypes in this respect. Thankfully over the years CoH slowly narrowed the gap with various buffs and nerfs that helped to balance the overall playing field. By the end of CoH it was still true that the average 1st level Scrapper could solo much easier than the average 1st level Controller, but at least the Controller was no longer as frustratingly slow at doing it as it was back in 2004.

My main hope is that CoT will start with enough "lessons learned" from CoH to make it so that all the Archetypes are at least acceptably capable of doing anything they want without the gaps in abilities being quite so wide as they were at the beginning of CoH.

Greyhawk wrote:

With its Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary power sets, this game promises to be much different than CoX, much different than anything else out there, actually. At least, if I am understanding all the updates correctly (no guarantee of that!).
So I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Myself, I would greatly prefer teams of roughly equal participants over the classic Tank-DPS-Healer holy triangle of gaming. Gary Gygax was quite ingenious in his design paradigm, but I think it is time to break away and discover a new paradigm.

If you could roughly compare basic D&D weapon damages to the question of CoH soloing you'd see that the dagger (the weapon mostly likely used by the magic-user equivalent Squishies did 1-4 points of damage whereas the long sword (the weapon mostly likely used by the fighter equivalent Scrapper/Tank did 1-8 points of damage. In this highly simplistic scenario one could say a D&D version of a Scrapper/Tank would've been roughly twice as effective as the D&D version of a Squishies in a basic combat situation.

The problem, at least at the begging of CoH, was that there were cases where the Scrappers/Tanks were in reality probably orders of magnitude better than their squishy counterparts in terms of solo survivability and effectiveness. The gap between them was simply too great. All I'm suggesting is that the gap between greatest and least not be so large for CoT.

Redlynne wrote:

Actually, you might think that, Lothic, but for a long time, Tankers were just about as "squishy" as all the "squishies" out there until they got past Level 20 and had Fitness available to them. That's because as a newbie Tanker you drew aggro (like you ought to) but didn't have enough of your protection scheme up and running yet to be able to withstand all of that incoming hatred AND output any beatdown of your own to make the incoming stop pounding on you before you fell flat on your face. I knew of a lot of Players who wanted to play a Tanker, but they just got so frustrated before the Archetype "got good" at doing their role that they just gave up and rerolled to play something else.
Mind you, back in the pre-City of Villains days, the game was QUITE different from where it eventually ended up ... but it was still true that for Tankers it really was a long hard frustrating SLOG to get past Level 20 and start having enough Enhancement Slots available and Single Origin Enhancements to put into them at Level 22. It was pretty brutal, and the winnowing was rather remorseless. A lot of people simply weren't willing to "suffer" for that long in order to have a Late Bloomer that eventually got "good" once you'd played perhaps more than 1/2 the game's content.

Even if I accept your claim that Tanks could be or ever were as "squishy" as an actual squishy I think you effectively agreed with me when you acknowledged that CoH did evolve quite a bit over time. I believe much of that evolutionary tweaking dealt with with various buffs/nerfs that made the soloing situation more equitable between ALL Archetypes. It didn't make everyone equal - it just reduced the gap between the extremes.

Again all I'm saying is that I hope CoT starts with much of that kind of balancing already in place without us having to repeat many years of relatively large and disruptive shifts to "fix" problems that we already fixed in CoH.

Redlynne wrote:

And in reference to your 1d4 vs 1d8 mention, that was mainly a point about the differences between Physical vs Magical combat options. Using "weapons" meant that you usually inflicted low damage but could keep it up almost indefinitely, giving your character what we today would call a "pressure" build. On the "magical" side of things you could (after a few Levels) bring to bear incredibly powerful high damage attacks, but couldn't sustain their use for very long, giving your character what we today would call a "spike" build. So the tradeoff was very clearly Glass Cannon vs Endurance Monster.

Again my approach to this was highlighting the "gap" between what different classes(archetypes) can do. Obviously if you factored in all the other D&D notions of "magic versus melee" and tried to compare differences between high and low level characters then of course all the numbers start to skew wildly. That's why I made it obvious that I was only comparing simple combat capability vis-a-vis equivalent weapon damage ranges. For the most part the differences between baseline 1st level Fighters and Magic-Users in D&D never started out as widely mismatched as the various squishies and non-squishes started in CoH. At best the difference in the starting D&D classes was like Superman vs. Wonder Woman as opposed to CoH's Superman vs. Betty White.

Having a range of performance within and between classifications is unadvoidable. What the intent of design should do is ensure that every classification or better yet every reasonable (as in player did not go out of their way to avoid every single attack) should perform within the expected bounds.

What we hope to impart within the system is the capability of building any classification for a wide range of play styles and thus performance capability.
I can't of course divulge the details of the secret sauce but I'm going to bet it'll be tasty.

As to warbird's comments about aproaching combat differently, this will vary from classification a d even within classification based on the combination of Mastery powers chosen.
Some will be more...straight forward while others will require some forethought or adaptability.

Tannim222 wrote:

Having a range of performance within and between classifications is unadvoidable. What the intent of design should do is ensure that every classification or better yet every reasonable (as in player did not go out of their way to avoid every single attack) should perform within the expected bounds.

Totally agreed. A range of performance between classifications is not only unavoidable but by definition necessary - if every class worked equally well in all cases what would be the point of having separate classifications?

But while a "range" of performance is necessary having that range span too widely between the most and least capable is not desirable. I have no problem with one class being 2 or 3 times as good as another class when it comes to basic combat capability. But when one class is arguably 10 or 20 times better (anyone remember why the angst-ridden [url=http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Issue_5#Powers]Issue 5[/url] nerfs were needed in CoH?) that's when your concept of "boundaries" need to be tweaked/restored.

Redlynne wrote:

So long as we don't wind up with Controllers who have no protection against being Controlled. That was just silly.

I think it was silly that only melee's and a few special Buff/Debuff sets gave protection from being controlled.

I don't see why a controller would automatically be immune to being controlled, but I don't see why a melee would automatically have protection against all controls either.

A fire user for instance would generally (not always) be likely to be immune to a fire cage, but that ice cage may or may not subdue them, as well as that telekinetic/force field bubble.

Force Field/Telekinetic prisons tend to be able to be overpowered/damaged to the point of breaking as well, at least when used by a villain/hero with such powers (big energy fields by a powerful device tends to be different).

Mental holds? How do we decide a characters willpower for getting out of that? Just because they're not psychic doesn't mean they lack willpower.

Brand X wrote:

I don't see why a controller would automatically be immune to being controlled, but I don't see why a melee would automatically have protection against all controls either.

It's just one of those things ... like being a Sword Fighter. The basic assumption is that if you're a Sword Fighter you ought to be better able to defend yourself against Swords than someone who wasn't or had no experience with Swords.

So the basic notion is that if your Powers do a lot of {insert effect here} then your character ought to have an advantage when it comes to protection against {insert exact same effect here}. It's one of those "if you can dish it out you ought to be able to take it" kinds of things.

If you're a Mind Controller, you ought to be more resistant to being Mind Controlled than the average schmoe, because that's your Shtick.

Now, there are various ways to do this (go figure), and it can be done to different degrees, but that's the underlying notion.

It is a bit of a slippery slope of design. If i do x i should be safer vs y being always applicable to every playstyle.
One of the purposses of providing a wide range of tertiary sets is to allow players to expand their build to suit their concept and / or desired play. Tertiaries allow for gaining something the primary / secondary lacks or continue to improve upon.

A control / assault combo having no native protections isn't ever without ability to access protections thanks to the availability of protection tertiaries.

Redlynne wrote:

If you're a Mind Controller, you ought to be more resistant to being Mind Controlled than the average schmoe, because that's your Shtick.

+1.. but Only a Small Buff. Scrapper/Tanker/Brutes or the like would Still have allot more Resistance. Or Potential* for much more Resistance to certain Mez'.

I agree Lothic.

Nothing wrong with some added bonuses when it comes to defense if that's what the AT/Class calls for. You can always RP it as less, you can never really play it with more, so good to have options.

As we talk of these mez's though, I do hope we don't have the issue of CoH where people cried whenever a melee lost access to a mez protection. Though I hope there's power choices for people who can't live without it (well choices, would be nice if one doesn't feel locked into one path).

In CoH, I know I always thought Blasters for instance should have had better Toggle Armor and some mez resist in that toggle armor in the Epic Pools.

Classes will surly have inherent traits. But I do not think inherent defenses need be anywhere besides Tanks and maybe melee.

if you think you're characer should be mez resistant then slot for it. No one is stopping you. But it doesn't come for free (unless a tank set has that as a trait of added defense). Tanks will have more to choose from in defenses but there is no reason for non-tank mechanics to get free redistances (maybe a tiny bit for MDPS)

JayBezz wrote:

Classes will surly have inherent traits. But I do not think inherent defenses need be anywhere besides Tanks and maybe melee.
if you think you're characer should be mez resistant then slot for it. No one is stopping you. But it doesn't come for free (unless a tank set has that as a trait of added defense). Tanks will have more to choose from in defenses but there is no reason for non-tank mechanics to get free redistances (maybe a tiny bit for MDPS)

Now you want to go with the "little bit pregnant" argument here? If you don't like the idea of inherent defenses for Controllers why should Tank or Scrapper types get them?

Make up your mind if you think ANY class should get inherent defenses of any kind first. Once you're clear on that then decide why if you give them to one class of character why other classes couldn't have their own variants?

I'm not looking to make Controllers as defensively strong as Tanks - far from it. Look at what I wrote in my last post and you see what I’m proposing is specific and highly focused towards addressing a bit of illogic that's been around since the first days of CoH. It makes absolutely no sense that a Type X controller would be just as vulnerable to Type X mez powers as a non Type X Controller, period.

Lothic wrote:

Now if you don't think it makes any sense that a person who say is an Ice Controller would know how to inherently avoid getting caught by an ice-based mez themselves that's your prerogative. I wouldn't agree with you on that, but by the same token you don't have to hyperbolically claim the entire game would explode if you started to even consider reasonable cause and effect relationships like that.

I understand y our reasoning. However, it is the foot in the door that leads to other types of reasoning that begins the slippery slope of design. So if all "ice controllers" must resist all "ice control powers" in some way, what about all "ice debuffers" having protection against all "ice debuffing powers".

What happens if "ice" isn't an actual damage type? I'm not saying it is or isn't for this game, but waxing hypothetical here that we want to avoid having a huge list of damage types - ice is after all just an animation representative of what may be considered "stuff that is cold". So suddenly it is the "ice controller" needs to be better at protecting itself against all the stuff that is "cold related controls".

Then another player comes along and says, "well a bunch of the cold controls slows" and in their view, slows are a bigger component of what their contoller does and they believe that not only is there some inherent ability to have mez, but anything related to those mez attacks - the slows, and so on.

The rangers come along and say, well this ranged set is best at ranged "all things hot" damage, it should have inherent protection against that. But mez is such a problem, shouldn't they also have "all things hot" mez protection?

A set is designed to perform within its playstyle. A control set primarily uses controls. A melee set primarily provides melee attacks. They don't require an implicit design to also provide a functional form of protection towards the "things the set is good at".

If in your view, your cold controlling character should be good at protecting itself from controls, you take up the appropriate tertiary for it. If you think it should be better suited to play up the slow effects over the control aspects, you socket the appropriate augments accordingly.

Basically, if we give one kind of set an "inherent ability to do (something)" then we will have to design every set with an "inherent ability to do (something)". And what those inherents are people will still probably end up disagreeing and say in their view, applying logic or not to support their argument.

Classifications themselves don't have inherent ability either. We designed sets to be primary or secondary and they function accordingly. The classification "abilties" are found within the Masteries. Even our Masteries are designed within their own framework.

JayBezz wrote:

1) Tanks have increased resistances. If the devs give tanks inherent defenses is inherent to their design purpose.
2) Melee DPS has a combat disadvantage that makes them take more damage than the ranged DPS.. I'm not sure how MWM will take that into effect but inherent resistances are a possible solution.
3) Buffers, Debuffers, and Ranged DPS do not have any inherent need or design purpose to merit added resistances.
4) All characters should be able to choose a resistance for their character.
There is no conflict of argument in those statements.

You've made arbitrary claims that "tanks need inherent resistances" and "non-tanks do not need inherent resistances". What allows your arbitrarily opinionated statements on this override the suggestion that non-tanks could have limited resistances to specific powers? There's no rule that says "only tanks get defenses". Tell me were such a rule is written?

As far as there being "no conflict of argument" goes you just said "All [players] should be able to choose a resistance for their character" right after saying Tanks (and perhaps melee types) should get hardwired inherent resistances. Where's the element of choice there? What if I wanted to make a Tank without such Dev-mandated restistances? Epic fail much?

JayBezz wrote:

Your statement that RDPS, Buffers and Debuffers should have inherent resistances does cause conflict with the design that they are not designed for the purpose of needing resistances.

You handwaved the idea that giving Controllers something like I've suggested would somehow be bad because they aren't "supposed" to have things like that. Why? You've proven nothing here and used the kind of "reasoning" a three year old tries to use to get his/her favorite cookie while doing it. *shrugs*

JayBezz wrote:

You are arguing an amendment to state either that
4) All characters should be be forced into a resistance for their character based on their class
or
4) All characters should be able to choose a resistance for their character in addition to an inherent defense.
I agree with Tannim that this is a balance failure because of what it does to the Tank (and perhaps MDPS) role's design purpose. The result is either an unnecessary added layer of resistance or a forced resistance choice.. both of which I take issue with.

You are the one who's needlessly expanding what I've suggested to include ALL characters and trying to paint this as extra "layer" of complexity. If you're already willing to give Tanks and/or Scrappers certain kinds of inherent resistances why can't Controllers have their own very different and limited variant of that? Also your argment about FORCING characters like Controllers to have some kind of hardwired resistance would somehow ruin player choice is completely laughable because you're already accepting that kind of thing for Tanks. Why aren't you upset that Tanks/Scrappers are given blanket resistances that we aren't able to customize?

I understand that we disagree.. I'm not understanding why you think that "Tanks have inherent resistances" is not by design.

What, in your definition, is a tank? Does that definition not include being more resistant to effects (HP loss, Mez, Debuffs) than other classes?

Lothic wrote:

Tannim222 wrote:
It is a bit of a slippery slope of design. If i do x i should be safer vs y being always applicable to every playstyle.
There's a huge difference between 1) claiming a Fire Controller should be resistant to ALL mez effects of any kind just because he/she is a Controller and 2) suggesting a Fire Controller might have some extra resistance SPECIFICALLY only against Fire Controller attacks. Can you guys honestly not see the difference between these two things? It's not a case of X vs Y it's a case of what happens when it's X vs X.

I'm going to have to backstop Lothic here.

If I can do X, then I ought to get some measure of protection against X to the tune of X+1 per X thing that I can do. Not X+10 per X thing. Not Z+10 because I can do X, or Z+10 because I'm a disadvantaged Melee Fighter and demand compensation for not being able to do anything at range.

So lets get down to brass tacks here. Let's put some numbers onto this instead of waving our hands around in the air while we talk past each other because we can't be bothered to DEFINE anything so as to ensure we're all working off the same page and using the same assumptions.

Let's say that I've got an attack called ... [url=http://tomax.cohtitan.com/data/powers/power.php?id=Controller_Control.Mind_Control.Mesmerize]Mesmerize[/url] ... because I'm a Mind Controller. What does the Power [b]ACTUALLY DO[/b]?

It inflicts a Mez.
What kind of Mez?
A Sleep Mez.

It inflicts Damage.
What kind of Damage?
Psionic Damage.

Is it a Melee, Ranged or AoE attack?
[b]NONE OF THE ABOVE.[/b]

Go ahead ... go look at the link I provided you. I'll wait for you. Okay, we finished with the link? We all working from the same page? Got the same assumptions? Right, moving on.

So we've got an attack that does Psionic Damage and a Psionic Sleep that has no Positional (melee, ranged, AoE) components to it whatsoever.

So why not rig things such that this gives the PC a trivial amount of protection to Psionic Damage (say, 1% Resistance AND Defense against Psionic attacks?) and a similar level of trivial protection against All Types of Mez (say 1% again) with an additional stack of protection against Mez that are Psionic based (say, another 1% again) and yet another stack of protection against Sleep Mez (say, yet another 1% yet again).

So because my PC has a Mesmerize Power that inflicts a Psionic Damage plus Sleep attack, my PC has:
[list][*]+1% Resistance to Psionic Damage
[*]+1% Defense to Psionic Damage attacks
[*]+1% Mez Protection against All Mez Types
[*]+1% Mez Protection against All Psionic Mez Types
[*]+1% Mez Protection against All Sleep Mez Types[/list]
This would mean that if another Mind Controller who had Mesmerize hit me with the exact same Mesmerize attack, they'd have a harder time hurting me than they would if they were going after someone who wasn't a Mind Controller (and thus didn't "know the tricks" that a Mind Controller knows and uses).

In this way, the attack Powers you choose have an influence on what you are best protected AGAINST. And this kind of structure can be extended beyond just simply Mez Effects like I'm doing here. It could also apply to straight up Damage Powers as well.

So a Martial Arts Scrapper who does Smashing Damage becomes "tougher" against Smashing Damage by virtue of their Powerset, and which Powers they took from their Martial Arts. Take only a few and you get only a little bit of protection. Take them all, and you'll get more.

If you set things up this way, although the individual bits and pieces are, individually, not all that much, once you start adding up the ENTIRETY of a character build you could potentially start to see a sort of "pattern" emerge for what a particular build is "best at" and where it might have weaknesses.

Note that this could potentially even work as a sort of Two Way Street, where the Protection Powers offer similar advantages in reverse to the Offense Powers. This would then create opportunities for both Specialist builds (Fire/Fire) as well as Generalist builds (Fire/Ice) in which the sum becomes greater than its parts.

In other words, it is perfectly possible to create a system in which "simply" designing the build of your PC can be a meta-game in and of itself. And before anyone complains that doing that sounds like a lot of work ... I'd point out that "playing" Mids' Hero Planner was no walk in the park and that I'd rather derive "set bonuses" from the Powers you have than from the Enhancements you slot. I'd prefer to have "Smash Specialists" and "Fire Specialists" and so on, with the underlying understanding that CHOOSING TO SPECIALIZE will necessarily result in your PC being "weaker" in areas outside of your chosen Specialization.

If you build the system in an "every little bit helps" kind of way, the diversity of possibilities starts becoming endless, rather than just merely cookie cutter.

You're welcome.

Lothic wrote:

I never thought I'd live to see the day where a Dev was arguing against something a player suggested because he believed that the suggestion would somehow expand beyond its limited boundaries and single-handedly destroy the entire foundations of the game. Trust me - I'm not that powerful and you're not that impotent. ;)
You, like JayBezz, have simply found yourself in the "little bit pregnant" quandary where you don't want to give inherent resistances to one class because somehow that would be "wrong" yet you have absolutely no trouble letting other classes have them all day long. If you want to fall back to the idea that "Controller players can choose tertiaries for that kind of resistance" then you better not even DREAM of giving Tanks inherent resistances of ANY kind because it would be the height of hypocrisy if you did.
This is basically a "all or nothing" situation. If Controllers can't have inherent resistances then neither can anyone else by the simple logic of fairness. Now if you're telling us that the very concept of "inherent resistance" is already NOT going to exist in CoT for anyone then that's great. But if you're letting that cat out of the bag for Tanks/Scrappers you better be willing to all the way.

Class capabilities are designed within the Mastery powers and primary / secondary set functions by play style.

Your argument that if "controllers" can't have "inherent" resistances than neither can anyone else fails to realize the above stated intention of design.

Again, you set up an argument for why a specific classification should have some intrinsic function that happens to coincide with another function. In this case: a classifcation "controller" should have both the powers to control others and because it can control others also have the ability to withstand being controlled by others in some manner.

Boiling that down to its basic design methodology: every classification that has a function must also have coinciding function that is intrinsicly related to the first function.

If "Contollers" control and therefore must have the ability to protect against control effects than each class must also have their own intinsic functions.

If we divorce ourselves from class functions since those are designated by Masteries and the primary / secondary play styles then we have a result where a primary set that offers controls must also have powers or a basic function that provides protection against controls. To which every power set will require a similar design.

This is why I said it is a slippery slope.

Lothic wrote:

This is only a "slippery slope" to you because you're going out of your way to hyper-generalize my suggestion towards some kind of logical infinity. You're the one overblowing this thing by many orders of magnitude. Again, just stop doing that.

First, I'm sorry if it appears that way to you. I'm being honest in that I'm not trying to hyper-generalize.

But even if you look at where Redlynne is taking this in the examples given you can begin to see how far this can end up going. Where every set ends up providing some form of additional benefits based on providing additional functions beyond the playstyle of the intended set. Like a melee set that provides protection towards same-type damage just because it does melee damage.

Certainly with the availability to design your character to improve upon what it already does or branch out in other directions through the use of tertiaries already provides the capability to suit such needs as that is in part the intent of providing a wide range of tertiaries.

Tannim222 wrote:

But even if you look at where Redlynne is taking this in the examples given you can begin to see how far this can end up going. Where every set ends up providing some form of additional benefits based on providing additional functions beyond the playstyle of the intended set. Like a melee set that provides protection towards same-type damage just because it does melee damage.

Offensive Powers add a smidge of Protection against the types of effects the Offensive Power does.

Protection Powers add a smidge of Offensive advantage to the types of effects aligned to those Protections.

According to Tannim222, this slippery slope is completely frictionless and naturally rests at an angle very closely aligned with the [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir]nadir[/url].

Some people think that Tannim222 is overreacting.
I happen to be one of them.

I'm not saying its impossible to do, it only adds to complexity of design and opens the door for arguments to be made of "if control powers also provide control protection why can't they also do...insert idea and logical or illogical argument".

If we did go back and redesign power set frameworks yet again with this it adds complications such as:
Buffs that add protections need to add damage boosts
What about that are instant
Buffs that increase accuracy - they should add dodge mechanics
Debuffs must provide protections agains debuffs.
Evasion provides...accuracy (but accuracy has other implications that other effects don't...)
Or sets with a variety of different power effects that would get these little bits of bonuses that don't accumulate meaningfully to provide statistically relevancy.
It also doesn't account for how we intend to provide protections against certain effects.
Or account for new mechanics we intend to introduce and then we would have to provide bonuses for powers that use them.

Again not impossible but it has other ramifications for how we are designing powers and sets as a whole. Ramifications that would affect the output of a power and therefore entire set's over all performance metrics. And this is actually old territory for power and set design providing a benefit that accumulates per power, set inherent powers, and so on and it was long ago decided we are providing similar capabilities in other ways within the game.

Tertiary sets allow for improving upon or branching out from primary / secondary play styles.
Power Set Augments allow for bonuses or changes to power effects for powers within a set.
Crafted Augment and Refinement Sets can provide other bonuses for having or using a power.
We leave it up to the player how to improvie upon or branch out from their core primary / secondary play style designs instead of applying the do this effect get that bonus opposite or tengental to that effect in every power and every set,

No one is saying that you can't have mez people resistant to mez. But if that's your choice it comes at the cost is the other resistances you didn't choose. It is not free.

Interdictor wrote:

I don't think it's at all necessary that characters are automatically resistant to their own powers or like-powers.

I would point out that the VALUE of the automatic boost makes a difference. Getting a +1% boost from having a Power is not the same as having a +10% boost for free.